Question: Can an egg hunt be democratic?

Easter is teaching me and my children lots of things, and not the ones you might expect.

Yes, my children are indeed associating yet another holiday with sugar, which is what I swore I wouldn’t allow, but in a moment of weakness, (see 4/10 post) I allowed the idea of the Easter Bunny to enter my children’s realm. To be fair, I didn’t start it; the schools did. They didn’t hear about the damn Easter Bunny from me. Yes, I blame the schools.

But I did nothing to stop perpetuating the myth of the E.B., and in fact solidified it by buying baskets and small treats (mostly chocolate) for my two smallish children.

Then the kids got to do egg hunts and the real fun began. And by fun, I mean chaos, misery and the requirement of U.N. level negotiations to allocate eggs to the two children involved in a series of increasingly acrimonious disputes.

I ask you, how do you make an egg hunt democratic? When these are done at schools, the quick and the greedy always get the most. This leaves the slower and less agile at a serious disadvantage. It's totally and utterly unfair. Is this something we just have to accept? I think not.

At home, I tried to level the playing field; each child picked a color and was told only to find that one. But that was only effective in theory.

What ultimately happened, of course, was that one child found more eggs more quickly and battles ensued as to which color was originally “mine” versus “yours”, and “Don’t show me where mine is, I want to find it myself!” and “Don’t take my egg!” and “It’s not fair, he found all of his first!” There really is no way to win in this situation.

Eventually the color-coding got exhausting, time consuming and totally not fun, so I just put the kids’ initials on the eggs, hid them, and said, “Deal with it”. That worked better than anything else we tried. I don't think egg hunts can be democratic after all. Maybe they're a good preparation for life.

But hot damn, what a lot of rigamarole. Holidays truly are exhausting.